Bold suits with a front slit skirt that reveals a layer of lace. Sculpted jackets worn over voluminous trousers.
Exquisite coats in iridescent pastel colors. Tweed is back on the Chanel runway this month.
Hand-woven in a fresh color palette of caramel pinks, pale blues and deep purples, the fabric has been redesigned for the 21st century, and even the famous little black jacket has been redesigned into a shiny black fabric.
The Chanel tweed – and the tweed jacket in particular – is perhaps the most loved and most famous of all Coco Chanel’s legendary creations, and its look hints at the French design house’s rich heritage.
But the resurgence of tweed also has a special poignancy, as through its many incarnations weave a love story that has revolutionized fashion history.
After all, it was in 1928, when Coco Chanel lived in the Highlands with her lover, the Duke of Westminster, that she first fell in love with this fabric.
The Chanel tweed – and the tweed jacket in particular – is perhaps the most loved and most famous of all Coco Chanel’s legendary creations, and its look hints at the French design house’s rich heritage. The 1958 Chanel model is pictured above.
One day, feeling cold, she borrowed one of his tweed jackets and draped it over her shoulders.
The jacket was well-worn, even slightly worn, which would be the key to what followed.
At that time, tweed was usually heavy and rather stiff, meant to be worn in the countryside, where it could withstand cold, wind and rain well. But with that soft old favorite on her shoulders, Chanel rethinks fabric.
This immediately echoed two aspects of her personality – her ability to see what most people would hardly notice, and her love for England.
Chanel’s fresh eye turned tweed into something soft, stretchy, sophisticated and metropolitan as it began to appear in her collections.
Her first cardigan appeared in 1925, and by October 1927, American Vogue was hailing Scottish tweed as “the new godchild of the French haute couturier.”
There has always been a touch of androgyny in Chanel’s styles; the use of such masculine material took it one step further, perhaps creating one of the most feminine looks of her career.
Her iconic tweed jacket, often paired with a matching skirt, was an instant success. One American store sold 200 copies of that year’s Chanel suit in just one day.
It went through all her collections in different versions – sometimes with gold-plated buttons and chains, sometimes with a fringed edge, sometimes in a brighter color than her usual palette – black, navy blue, beige or white – and quickly became a classic.
Bold suits with a front slit skirt that reveals a layer of lace. Sculpted jackets worn over voluminous trousers. Exquisite coats in iridescent pastel colors. Tweed is back on the Chanel runway this month.
Even today, 51 years after her death, it still has the endorsement of famous women around the world, including fashion queen Anna Wintour herself.
The romance that launched her signature look began on a warm evening on the French Riviera. Coco — wearing one of her favorite ivory satin gowns, with a string of pearls given to her by her then-beloved Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich — was dining at the glamorous Hotel de Paris in Monaco with friend Vera Batet when she first met the duke. Westminster.
Even in this opulent setting, favored by movie stars, aristocrats, European royalty and the very rich, two women would draw admiring glances. Having married an American, Vera was beautiful and elegant at the same time; Coco, slender and fit, with shiny dark hair and radiant olive skin, was the epitome of style.
As they chatted, the 43-year-old duke approached them. Tall, fair-haired, handsome and generous, he was also the richest man in England, with an income reputed to be in excess of a pound a minute.
Houses were scattered all over the place, ready for immediate occupation: silver polished, cars fueled, food in the pantry. Chanel later noticed that he rarely stayed in one of his houses for more than three days in a row.
He arrived in Monaco on his yacht Flying Cloud and decided that he would like to have lunch on the shore, and then gamble (an underground tunnel led from the hotel to the casino so that a real drug addict could escape for fluttering on roulette). table between courses).
Noticing Vera, who he knew, he approached, and all thoughts of gambling flew out of the duke’s mind. Immediately smitten with Coco, he invited both women to dine with him on his yacht the next evening, hiring a gypsy band to serenade them and taking them to a nightclub to dance.
For the duke, whose nickname was Bendor, after his grandfather’s Derby winner, Bend Ohr, Chanel was very different from any other woman he had met. Then, when she was well over 30, she became an independent person.
She was also rich, but thanks to her talent and determination. Her childhood was spent in a remote orphanage where her Auvergne peasant father abandoned her at the age of 11 before disappearing from her life, leaving her with the knowledge that the only person she could rely on was herself.
Hence her ferocious work ethic, which, combined with talent and originality, allowed her to rise to the top of her profession. After the corseted voluptuousness of the Edwardian era, she revolutionized fashion by designing simple, cut-back clothing for women that allowed them to move freely.
She did not hesitate to break taboos that seemed to be carved in stone, as when one evening, looking out over the crowded theater at the sea of pastel dresses in front of her, she said, “I’ll dress them all in black.” Like many of the rules she broke, it was out of both class and fashion.
Prior to this, only servants regularly wore black; it was an ironclad rule for the Society that black could only be worn in mourning. But since she was Coco Chanel, she got her way – and soon the little black dress began to appear on the rich and powerful.
She also used unfashionable materials such as jersey – society women are more accustomed to fine wool and silk.
Soon she will introduce another fabric and make it even more fashionable. Tweed.
Independent and financially secure, Koko at first did not hesitate to reject Bendor’s advances, which must have been a new sensation for him.
Coco is pictured at the races with the Duke in 1933.
He courted her in every possible way, sending her flowers, jewelry, grapes from his greenhouses, and salmon brought by plane from his Scottish estate. But, as she repeatedly explained, what did he have that she could want? She was rich, famous, had a wide circle of friends from the artistic and intellectual center of Paris.
However, she left the door open, telling him that she would meet him next year. In the late spring of 1924, she took his dashing black-hulled yacht, the Flying Cloud, on a Mediterranean cruise. This was the beginning of their romance, which became famous throughout Britain and France.
There could not have been a more romantic and luxurious setting. The yacht had a crew of 40 to cater for every need.
Bendor even brought a small band with him so they could dance every night if they wanted to.
Their private quarters had a four-poster bed and silk drapes.
Chanel returned from a cruise tanned and thus – another fashion novelty – made a tan stylish and sexy.
She quickly adapted to life as the lovely friend of a very wealthy Englishman. In England, she was the mistress of the duke, rode horseback, swam, hunted, played tennis – even learned to fish for salmon.
She got on well with Bendor’s friends, especially Winston Churchill, who wrote of her to his wife Clementine, “She is very agreeable” and visited her every time he went to Paris.
When Bendor bought the house in the Scotland Highlands, it was Chanel who spruced it up, painting the walls beige and, a landmark in itself, installed the first bidet Scotland has ever seen.
But she never quit her job. In those days, she released two collections a year. The first step was to choose a fabric, then she described to the assistant what she wanted (Koko could not draw, so there were no sketches).
After the canvas dress was cut and fitted to the model at home, she began to remake the sleeves, pin up here and stitch there, until she was satisfied. the whole process of carving, chopping, altering began again, until at last she was satisfied.
At first, she used Scottish tweed, already known all over the world, although mainly for menswear and in its more traditional shades.
She even brought leaves and bits of earth to her growers to ensure the exact shade she wanted.
Her coats, suits, and even tweed sportswear soon became popular. To secure her tweed exclusivity, Bendor even bought Chanel a tweed factory in Scotland.
She often paired tweed with unusual fabrics, such as a gray wool coat lined with fuchsia silk over a matching fuchsia silk dress shown in 1929.
When renowned stage and film actress Ina Claire was spotted wearing a brown Chanel tweed dress, other Parisian designers immediately followed suit.
Chanel, always one step ahead, moved its factory from Scotland to northern France in the 1930s, where it began to produce softer, lighter tweeds. This she often paired with wool, silk, cotton, and even cellophane to give a more fashionable and effortless style.
Ten years later, the affair with Bendor slowly fell apart, although, like almost all of her lovers, he remained a close friend. One room in the house she had built in the south of France, on the spot she had seen from his yacht, was always ready for him.
No one knows for sure if he asked her to marry him or if she refused, but no doubt she loved him. “My real life started in Westminster,” she told a friend. “I finally found a shoulder to lean on.”
And perhaps the one from which she drew the greatest inspiration.
Anne de Courcy’s Riviera Chanel is published by W&N for £20.